Would the German public support Generalplan Ost?

Would the German public support Generalplan Ost?

  • Yes

    Votes: 42 41.6%
  • No

    Votes: 11 10.9%
  • To a degree

    Votes: 48 47.5%

  • Total voters
    101
I don't think they would be told about all of it. The plan would also be done in several stages over a few decades, and the population of Lorraine or Alsace was basically going to be sent there in it's entirely due to it being seen as French-loving Germans who didn't appreciate all the wonderful things the Nazis were going. Though maybe awe-inspiring would be a better word. In the same way Ivan the Terrible was apparently Ivan the Awesome in Russian. Preeeetty bad.
 
a "new" element of such treaties in declaring one nation to be the sole responsible and "guilty" for the outbreak of a multinational war at all.

The clause clearly says that it's one side of an alliance, not one nation, to have committed the aggression.

And the notion is not new. Look up the Declaration of the Congress of Vienna in 1814. It states that Napoleon has placed himself outside the protection of the law, uses a word such as "criminal", and therefore defines Napoleon as a hostis humani generis - pre-emptively. Indeed it undertakes a commitment to use all means (meaning, to go to war against him) should he disturb peace.
 
The clause clearly says that it's one side of an alliance, not one nation, to have committed the aggression.

And the notion is not new. Look up the Declaration of the Congress of Vienna in 1814. It states that Napoleon has placed himself outside the protection of the law, uses a word such as "criminal", and therefore defines Napoleon as a hostis humani generis - pre-emptively. Indeed it undertakes a commitment to use all means (meaning, to go to war against him) should he disturb peace.
I believe partially due to him refusing peace talks until the latest Coalition was basically at the border. Meaning France kept the borders the Coalition was going to suggest (most of modern France), but with a Bourbon rather than a Bonaparte.
 
This I strongly doubt. My take (I have no hard evidence for this) is that those who had soldiered there would be happy never to go back, save maybe for a small number of fanatics. Those who would go would be poor farmers and peasant day laborers who owned no land in Germany, who had served elsewhere or at most in supporting duties in the rear areas, and who would know about the place only or almost only what the government was telling them.

I agree. A small minority of soldiers love war, killing and seeing people suffer. For the great majority, such experiences make them at the very least pretty uncomfortable, often they cause mental health issues, sometimes debilitatingly so. This was seen among all nations that took part in WWII. Nazi brainwashing only goes so far to change the basic setup of the human mind. I think that only people who would happily settle in the East would be those who a) have not fought or otherwise taken part in the actions in the East to see the reality there, b) those that have, but are psychopatic/sociopathic enough to not mind or actually do like the work, or c) those who know a little of the conditions but think that their current position in the Reich itself is so poor that they will get a better standard of living in the East.
 
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To paraphrase Robert Harris in Fatherland, "what's the point of living space when no-one wants to live there?"
 

Deleted member 1487

"DAE the Allies were just as bad??????"
Not say that at all, just that throughout history the US government had done many bad things, like say slavery and what happened to the Native Americans, and the US public as sat by according to that definition of support. Same for European states and Empires. As bad as all that is, it still isn't the Holocaust or Generalplan Ost.
 
Unless the Germans pull a massive growth rate I don't think they'll even be able to achieve it. I think they'll be able (and willing) to starve the east into submission and kill most of the people who live there in the first few years, but after that where are you going to attract all these colonists? It would take hundreds of thousands of people just to fill up Poland. My guess is that by about the mid 1950s they realize that it's kind of impossible and just leave the east alone as kind of an empty quasi-slave region.
 
From wikisourceIt was lesser the part about the responsibility for losses and damages, that caused the german embarresment but more the last, highlightened part, which was a "new" element of such treaties in declaring one nation to be the sole responsible and "guilty" for the outbreak of a multinational war at all.

That ENTIRE clause, with Germany changed for the appropriate nation was in EVERY peace treaty that ended WWI. So no, that's not what it declared.

At all.

And honestly just read the clause. It clearly says "Germany and her allies."
 
Unless the Germans pull a massive growth rate I don't think they'll even be able to achieve it. I think they'll be able (and willing) to starve the east into submission and kill most of the people who live there in the first few years, but after that where are you going to attract all these colonists? It would take hundreds of thousands of people just to fill up Poland. My guess is that by about the mid 1950s they realize that it's kind of impossible and just leave the east alone as kind of an empty quasi-slave region.

It is entirely possible for a population to approve a governmental project that then does not succeed. The question was not whether it would succeed, but whether it would be approved by the population.
 

CalBear

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Yes

People approve of something that only ever seems an idea, albeit one they know is being put into practice

These are the same people you can ask of: Do they support the Nuremburg Laws?

By and large, yes they did. Because it all seemed so theoretical or, like Brexit fanatics, they can quote analogies to Romanian super-families on benefits, which sing to their prejudice
It is rare when I see someone compare folks who want out of the EU to actual, real life Nazis.

Hopefully it will now be even more rare, at least here.

Capire?
 
It is entirely possible for a population to approve a governmental project that then does not succeed. The question was not whether it would succeed, but whether it would be approved by the population.

The bulk of it probably happens during the end of the conflict or very soon thereafter, by the time the general public discovers what happened it's probably fait accompli. At that point they probably just roll with it.
 
Unless the Germans pull a massive growth rate I don't think they'll even be able to achieve it. I think they'll be able (and willing) to starve the east into submission and kill most of the people who live there in the first few years, but after that where are you going to attract all these colonists? It would take hundreds of thousands of people just to fill up Poland. My guess is that by about the mid 1950s they realize that it's kind of impossible and just leave the east alone as kind of an empty quasi-slave region.

I agree the whole thing could have fizzled out in the 50s, but the Nazis were hoping for a massive growth rate increase and, at high levels, they seemed to genuinely want Germans to settle the east. It is a core part of Nazi doctrine (Volk ohne Raum, people without space) that Germany had too many people crammed into too little space. (They would have marveled at the level of density in democratic Germany today... practically all the land is developed in some way.) I think that, no matter what the outcome of Generalplan Ost, there would be an influx of people into the annexed areas of the Reich, that is, the areas lost after 1918. That could happen with the same level of population growth.

But, again, that's not what top-level Nazis wanted. There is a set of wall posters about population and the urban/rural divide here. For a more in-depth discussion on space and birth rates see here. One slide shows the average family size in 1870-1900 compared to 1900-1930. The author clearly views the 1870-1900 condition as preferable, and the ideal in the poster is a farm family with eight children. Overall, eight children is roughly what the Nazis wanted a good German family to have: four as a bare minimum (200% growth per generation), six as average (300% growth) and eight or more as ideal (400+% growth).

The question is, then, how the Nazi government was going to facilitate that high birth rate. Plans were underway, with the sanctification of large families via the Cross of the German Mother, and undoubtedly many Reichsmarks would have been spent post-war on benefits for large families. I don't think the Nazis would have forced people to have large families, via things like banning contraception; they would have encouraged having eight children as the summit of achievement for a German woman, and they would have believed that woman's daughters would be selected (by social Darwinism) to be good child-bearers in turn. Women who didn't want to have children weren't the sort of women Hitler was looking for.

What I mean by all this is that a leap in birth rates is entirely plausible. Ultimately the plan would succeed or fail by the willingness of German women to bear the appropriate number of children, but with some encouragement it's possible to see a return to 1870-1900 family sizes. What this means for Generalplan Ost is that there's a good chance the necessary people would be available in the 50s and 60s. Many of the post-war generation would choose to stay in the old Reich, but some would have to move to the East.

Earlier I said that Eastern Front soldiers might be the first in line to settle; I think that was well refuted. One eager category, perhaps, would be the well-indoctrinated children born in 1933 or later, children who had never known anything except the Nazi state, and who would be unfailingly loyal to it. (They'd be loyal to the state before their parents, in Orwellian fashion.) In other words, when a boy at a Hitler Youth camp got a little too close to a similarly aged girl in the BdM -- which happened all the time -- then it would be accepted without question that they should start a family in the East.
 
In other words, when a boy at a Hitler Youth camp got a little too close to a similarly aged girl in the BdM -- which happened all the time -- then it would be accepted without question that they should start a family in the East.
Can you imagine losing your virginity to some random BDM girl only to be told that she's going to be your plantation wife and there's nothing you can do about it since the Fuhrer demands it and it's for the good of the Party/Aryan Race?
 

Deleted member 1487

One eager category, perhaps, would be the well-indoctrinated children born in 1933 or later, children who had never known anything except the Nazi state, and who would be unfailingly loyal to it. (They'd be loyal to the state before their parents, in Orwellian fashion.)
How'd that work out for the USSR? People tend not to be simple machines you can upload ideology into and expect them to just follow along mindlessly forever, especially if leadership starts screwing up.
 
How'd that work out for the USSR? People tend not to be simple machines you can upload ideology into and expect them to just follow along mindlessly forever, especially if leadership starts screwing up.

Well, to be fair the USSR ran into the problem of intellectual dissonance: the claims of their ideology continued to diverge further and further from the realities/results on the ground, and eventually that lead people to abandon the ideology.

Here, however, the Nazis ARE providing you with living space. The Slavs ARE being treated as sub-humans. Aryan children DO probably feel superior to others around them, as they're privileged by the government, society, media, ect. That re-enforces Nazi ideology.
 

Deleted member 1487

Well, to be fair the USSR ran into the problem of intellectual dissonance: the claims of their ideology continued to diverge further and further from the realities/results on the ground, and eventually that lead people to abandon the ideology.

Here, however, the Nazis ARE providing you with living space. The Slavs ARE being treated as sub-humans. Aryan children DO probably feel superior to others around them, as they're privileged by the government, society, media, ect. That re-enforces Nazi ideology.
How is that going to change from Nazis running the economy into the ground and the Eastern Project being a disaster? Plus there is the effect of younger generations not buying into the projects of their parents, like the 1960s revolts of youth.
 
How is that going to change from Nazis running the economy into the ground and the Eastern Project being a disaster? Plus there is the effect of younger generations not buying into the projects of their parents, like the 1960s revolts of youth.

The Nazis could easily put in some reforms to maximize efficiency once Hitler dies. I don't see a Nazi State collapsing due to economic failure, I see it collapsing due to biting off a lot more than it can chew geopolitically.
 
I agree with most of your post but would prefer to say "The German people believe they had been wronged at Versailles". While Versailles was a harsh settlement, it was nowhere near as harsh as Brest-Litovsk or the break up of the Austro-Hungarian state or the Ottoman Empire. The belief stems I think from three main drivers.

1) the "stab in the back legend", put about by their own generals to save face.
2) the continuation of the RN blockade during the armistice, which we today would think harsh but at the time probably seemed necessary to the Allies to stop the Germans regrouping at fighting on.
3) the ''War Guilt' clause, which in historical hindsight was wrong in laying the moral responsibility for the War solely on Germany. I've read it was initially a 'War Damage' clause which would have been more acceptable since the Western Front was fought alamost entirely on French and Belgian territory.

Sorry about the nitpick, I do think that in practical terms you're right about how the German people would have been led to believe the Ostplan was justified. Is it fair to compare this to Confederates attitude to slaves?
People need a physical manifestation of the problems they can't seem to solve. It can lead in some pretty unhealthy directions.
 
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